2. Overview Ohio Balanced Growth Program Our Project Scope Olentangy Watershed Analysis Lessons Learned Applying the Lessons
3. Ohio Balanced Growth Program Land use has a direct impact on water quality Grant program encourages planning at a watershed scale balancedgrowth.ohio.gov
4. Project Scope 5 Plans, 5 Partnerships Olentangy River Walnut Creek Big Walnut Upper Scioto + Whetstone Creek 80+ Communities,Dozens of Stakeholders
5. Rocky River Upper West Branch Swan Creek Chippewa Creek Chagrin River Project Scope
23. PCA Example Hydric Soils Soil Permeability Score Habitats of Protected and Endangered Species Wetlands Natural Land cover 5 year Wellhead Protection Zone Parks and Open Space 100 yr Floodplain 1 year Wellhead Protection Zone 100 ft from River and Perennial streams
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25. Take Aways It’s the partnership’s plan Make technical decisions that keep it simple Communicate up front with decision makers Keep the lines of communication open and accessible
Annie is the GIS Specialist on the projectAndy has the Planning background
The key recognition of the program is the connection between land use and water quality.MORPC received a 2 year grant from the state to do a “Balanced Growth Plan” for portions of the Olentangy River Watershed. We leveraged these funds with federal transportation planning dollars to expand the geographic scope.
MORPC’s role in this effort is three pronged. Annie and I are just two members of the project team that includes two other planners and an outreach specialist.Annie will be telling you shortly about the technical part in detail. We’ve got more information online about the other parts of the program.Our scope includes 5 separate plans being developed in parallel. This means 5 partnerships for 5 watersheds made up, primarily of the local governments in each watershed. These partnerships drive the plan development because, in the end, their adoption of the plan determines its success or failure in the eyes of the state.
Scope of OWPP and others vs ALL other BG plansOlentangy Watershed Partnership 27 communities 30 stakeholders Cities (7) Columbus, Delaware, Grandview, Marion, Powell, Upper Arlington, WorthingtonVillages (3) Ashley, Riverlea, WaldoTownships – (17) Canaan, Cardington, Claridon, Clinton, Delaware, Liberty, Marion, Marlboro, Orange, Oxford, Perry, Pleasant, Richland, Sharon, Troy, WaldoCounties (4) Delaware, Franklin, Marion, Morrow-Characteristics of communities Many unique community personalities involved and differing levels of involvement and different types of reps. Township trusties. -Number counties (urban rural suburban) Also invited stakeholders to participate – SWCDs, ONDR, FLOW, BIA, LWV, OEPA, county planning commissions, etc.Other partnerships Had existing groups to work with.Chippewa Creek – 5 municipalities 2 park districtsRocky River Upper West Branch- 7 communities
3 Separate Spatial Analyses First 2 are required by the Balanced Growth Program the 3rd Agricultural Areas were optional. All 5 of our partnerships decided to include PCAsA Priority Conservation Area is a locally designated area targeted for protection and restoration.A Priority Development Area is a locally designated area where growth and/or redevelopment is to beespecially promoted in order to maximize development potential, efficiently utilize infrastructure, revitalizeexisting cities and townsPriority Agricultural Areas were not required but the Partnerships could decide to included
The partnership had to choose a base shape for the analysis.2 options. Parcels or GridsParcel – familiar shape to all the communities Grid- we as a staff like the uniform geography of the 40 acre Grid, that already existed from our Land use model (this is downtown Columbus, You are here)Grid was much larger than some Parcels and Much smaller than some parcels and in the End the partnership decided to use the Parcels.
We worked with the partnership to figure out with data we had that covered the entire areaThe partnership them used decided the importance of the data Data was weighted High, Meduim and Low which then they determined that the weights associated would be 3, 2, 1Every parcel in the was given a scoreExample – the roads were buffered based on importance of distance, Closer to the arterial distance of ¼ mile was given high weight than the distance of ½ mile from the arterial road.Columbus is down here (point) The darker areas had a higher scores. You can see where the Arterial Roads stand out with their higher weight
This is an example of a PDA parcel in the Olentangy watershedThis Parcel is was selected as intersecting with the … sewer service area, Artierial ½ mile Buffer, etc they are given a 1 and they layers other layers all get 0Then the field was calculated by applying the weights 1 to 3 to calculated the Parcel score. This Parcel was scored 10
This is the Priority Conservation Analysis.Like the PDA the darker areas are better suited as Priority Areas.
The same Spatial Analysis was done for the Agricultural areasThere was less data available so we had to be a little creative with the Adjacent to and the Large Parcels which were given lower weights, but still added to the total score. Ag mostly focused in the northern portion (headwaters region of the watershed)
Results of the Analysis!At the partnership meeting to discuss our proposed cut offs the partnership suggested that they would like to see cut off tiers so that more info was available for the decision making processThe Darker purple, orange and green areas are the initial cut off range and the lighter colors are the scores that were just below The yellow Areas are represent where there is Priority overlap the darker So much over lap… so may shades
This is an example of what a community map looked like.The partners were all given these maps and then asked to choose which priority they want between the overlapping Areas. This was also the time when they could Add or remove areas that the analysis choose.Each community was only looking at their own area….
They met again to look at the results of the revisions and They saw that there was MUCH more area designated that the original analysis WHERE’S the WATER?Buffers based on OPEA Permit2nd round of maps for Communities to add in Water and other PCA features to help balanced the PAA in the in the North and the PDA in the south.
Size of parcels – if a parcel touches the Priority designation feature then the entire parcel is assign is then weighted and give the importance as if the feature applies to the entire area. In the case of streams and other smaller PCA type features, many larger already designated industrial or developed parcels were getting scored PCA because of the proximity to the stream. Extending to full communities not just areas in watershedParcels are too personal! Community MappingThe simpler the map the better!lead refocused to community level NOT watershed level as project intended Had to retrofit other watershed partnerships to fit with the OWPPWeighting system needs for more robust and FLEXIBLETiers cause tears-There was too much confusion with the members that hadn’t been to the other meetings. The members that were at the PARCELS v GRID - decided parcel, Problem 1) Data isn’t continuous coverage. Some areas have more data than others.Problem 2) Promising to do analysis for ENITRE community not just portion in watershed –ANALYSIS AREA v. WatershedMesses up other watershed analysis’s Used as a way to get communities to sign on to project
Steering Committee Small group with authority to make minor decisions without meeting of ENITRE Planning PartnershipFeature Based overlap More time up front= Less time in review.New weighting system – Gave us more flexibility, but takes more time to figure out what the best rankings are. Less over lap too in the end Gathered more Ag relevant data- Century Farms, Certified Agricultural Use Value (CAUV), Removed Floodplain and stream buffers from PDA areas in differing combinations in some form
The Big Walnut Set up each data type by cutting it to fit the Analysis AreasDissolved each so they are all one polygon with 3 fields, type (PCA) Name (floodplain) Weight (3)Unioned each like type shapes, then created a score column. A cut off was establishedThen each of the Priorities Layers were interested to create the overlap areas.
Walnut Creek MapFeature overlap Spatial AnalysisNo community maps Quadrants for a better view of neighboring Less PCA/PDA overlap because of – rankingEasier overlap designationPoint out Rickenbacker industrial Area, future rood and streams!
